


Impossible Dream

by Rakefetzyz



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 12:59:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14044785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rakefetzyz/pseuds/Rakefetzyz
Summary: Two weeks have passed since the collapse of the Midland Circle building. Karen sits in Matt's church remembering and grieving.Karen fell in love with Matt the first time they met. But she fell in love with Matt not with Daredevil.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The title and the quoted lyrics are from the song, The Impossible Dream (The Quest), from the musical, Man of la Mancha.  
> The lyrics were written by Joe Darion.
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel and Netflix.

 Impossible Dream 

To dream the impossible dream  
To fight the unbeatable foe  
To bear with unbearable sorrow  
To run where the brave dare not go

Karen lit a votive candle and went to sit in a pew. It felt strange, spending so much time here when she was an agnostic. But Matt would want to be remembered in his church. She sat bent forward, her face in her hands, not crying exactly but with eyes that threatened to brim over into tears.  


Two weeks had passed since Matt was buried under the collapsed Midland Circle building. She no longer trusted her initial feeling that he might have survived. Her rational self told her how impossible that was.  


Karen fell in love with Matt the first time she met him.  


She didn’t know she had fallen in love. She was in jail, arrested for the murder of Daniel Fisher. She was innocent, but she couldn’t expect anyone to believe that. The police found her next to Daniel’s body, holding a knife, her hands dripping with blood. If someone else were found like that, she would think they did it too.  


When the two lawyers came to see her, she desperately begged them to believe her, knowing how impossible her plight was.  


“I believe you, Miss Page,” Matt said.  


She understood now that she fell in love with Matt when, against all evidence, he believed her.  


But Karen fell in love with Matt, not with Daredevil. It wasn’t that she had a problem with Daredevil. He had saved her life more than once. She just wasn’t in love with him.  


She was in love with the handsome, gallant lawyer who never allowed his blindness to stop him. She was in love with the defense attorney who dedicated his career to helping the innocent whether they could afford to pay for his services or not.  


Karen winced, remembering the insensitive questions she asked when Matt took her to his apartment for protection. He answered the first question, that he was not born blind, before she even asked it. But she also asked how it happened and whether he could remember seeing.  


Matt told only that he was blinded in a car accident at age nine. Later Foggy filled in the part of the story that Matt left out. How, as a child, he risked his own safety to save an old man’s life.  


Karen pulled a tissue from her purse and wiped her eyes. Both the action and the neglecting to mention it were so typical of Matt.  


When Karen sympathized that it must be hard to be blind, yet remember what it’s like to see, he brushed it off.  


”I got through it.”  


That too was typical, downplaying his suffering.  


Matt never wanted pity, not for being blind and not for losing his father and growing up in an orphanage.  


She must have known she was falling in love. When she brought food to thank Matt and Foggy, she made the lasagna recipe her grandmother told her to save for her future husband. Was she already hoping that would turn out to be Matt?  


And it was so sweetly romantic when they finally got together. Kissing in the rain. Going out for dinner and not wanting the night to end. Peering lovingly into the sightless eyes that couldn't return her gaze and yet feeling the love in them, too.  


But he wouldn’t come up to her apartment, telling her he didn’t want to wreck the perfect evening. Telling her he always brought disaster to the best things that happened to him.  


Sure enough he wrecked their relationship. His ex-girlfriend showed up and Matt chose her over Karen.  


Foggy told her that Elektra was bad news, that she made Matt neglect his obligations. It was only because she left that Matt graduated from law school. Elektra was bad news, but when the two were together you could feel the electricity sparking between them. Karen was angry and jealous but she never stopped loving Matt.  


Something was wrong with Matt, though. He got hurt and bruised too often for simple carelessness. Neither he nor Foggy gave her any explanations that made sense.  


Now of course Karen knew. She didn’t mind Daredevil. But she minded that Daredevil was Matt. She was in love with the upstanding lawyer, not the vigilante. The upstanding lawyer was who she wanted Matt to be.  


He did so much good as a defense attorney. Why did he need Daredevil? Was it connected somehow to the way the world treated blind people?  


Karen saw the pitying looks when they walked together and she heard the way some people talked down to him. Matt had graduated summa cum laude from Columbia Law School, yet there were people who spoke to him as if he were feeble minded.  


No one ever pitied or talked down to Daredevil. Could that be why Matt found it so hard to give it up?  


Not that any of it mattered now. Matt chose to be Daredevil and being Daredevil got him killed.  


Karen sat in her pew and wept for them both.


	2. Chapter 2

To fight for the right  
Without question or pause  
To be willing to march into Hell  
For a heavenly cause

 

Karen dabbed at her eyes again as she sat in the pew, remembering.  


Matt was right about one thing. He did have a way of bringing disaster. He didn’t destroy Karen’s love, but he did destroy any wish for a relationship. And he brought the Nelson and Murdock firm to ruin.  


He barely said anything when both she and Foggy decided to move on. She knew now that he must have feared bringing more harm to the two of them, the people he cared about most in the world.  


Then, suddenly, reports of Daredevil stopped coming in at the Bulletin. Matt seemed to have packed the suit in mothballs. Instead there were reports of a pro bono lawyer achieving amazing victories for his clients.  


Ellison readily agreed for Karen to cover the Aaron James case. He knew she used to work for the James' attorney and that she would get the best statement from him regardless of the court decision.  


The decision couldn’t be better. Matt won an eleven million dollar settlement. Eleven million dollars, from a corrupt corporation, for a young man whom they had gravely harmed through their greed. A settlement like that must be enough to satisfy even Matt's hero complex.  


Karen suggested they go to a café to take his statement. She hoped all they needed was a little time to figure things out and maybe eventually get back together.  


It seemed so promising when they talked at the café. Matt told her that he enjoyed the pro bono work and that he didn’t miss his other life. Maybe all they needed was some time to find their way again.  


But a week later he came to the Bulletin late at night. Karen made her disappointment clear. She hated that he was doing it again, she hated that he never even bothered to tell her. And Matt made no attempt to defend himself against her resentment.  


That was Matt again, caring for her safety even if it came at the expense of her approval or her love. He was so relieved when she agreed to go with him. He even apologized for wanting to save her life.  


“You deserve better, Karen.” Almost the last words he said to her.  


She didn’t realize then. She knew how ruthless the Hand was. She should have understood.  


She should have known when she saw him at the precinct and he said, “This is my life.”  


If people were in danger he would fight on their behalf. He had to.  


Hadn’t she done the same thing, herself?  


Could she have found the guts to shoot Wesley if she were the only one he planned to kill? She didn’t think so. She would never have chosen to live with a death on her hands, not even Wesley’s.  


It was not a question of right and wrong or what was legal. What she did was so clearly self defense that no judge or jury on earth would find her guilty of murder. It was a question of whether she could have found it in her to kill Wesley if none but her own life was at stake.  


But Wesley threatened to eliminate every person she loved, her family, Ben Urich, Foggy and Matt. She was willing to live with that terrible act, because in doing it, she saved all the people she loved. Well, all except poor Ben.  


Why hadn’t she realized that Matt was doing that too? Why had she blamed him?  


When this nightmare ended she would tell Matt she understood.  


But she didn't expect it to end the way it did. She didn’t expect it to end with her clutching Foggy as they stared frantically at the precinct doorway.


	3. Chapter 3

And the world will be better for this  
That one man, scorned and covered with scars  
Still strove with his last ounce of courage  
To reach the unreachable star

 

The empty doorway haunted her dreams. Each night, in her sleep, she returned to the precinct where she and Foggy stared together at the door. She always awoke sobbing, wondering how long she would be forced to relive that moment.  


Some nights the dream was more cruel. Some nights, in her dream, Matt did finally stagger through the precinct door. He would hug Foggy and then turn to Karen.  


“Matt,” she would choke through her tears, “we thought you weren't coming.”  


Then Matt would give her his apologetic smile and hug her tightly. They would loosen the hug for a tearful kiss.  


She always awoke before the kiss ended, her tears of relief turning once again to tears of sorrow.  


During the day or in the early evening she returned often to sit in her pew at the church. One evening Father Lantom approached her.  


“Please join me for a latte, Miss Page.”  


She was frequenting his church so much she felt she owed him that. She waited at the table while the priest prepared coffee.  


He set the two cups down, sat across from her, and spoke to her gently.  


“I too am grieving for Matthew, Miss Page. But I am a man of faith. I believe that in Heaven the blind can see. I believe that your friend will find his peace. Now you must try to find yours.”  


Karen found the father’s words oddly comforting. She didn’t share his faith. She wasn’t sure if Heaven existed or whether a person’s soul lived on after death.  


But she understood what the priest was trying to tell her. She needed to find a way to go on. She needed to find a kind of inner peace, and she needed to make her nightmares stop.  


If only there was some way she could carry on Matt's work for him. Could she? She had no extra-ordinary powers.  


Karen had no unusual abilities. But she would use what she did have, her skill as an investigative journalist. Each time she exposed a corrupt corporation or a dishonest politician, each time she prevented them from hurting the less powerful, she would do it in honor of Matt.  


She wiped her eyes one last time, collected her bags, and rose to leave the church.  


It looked like Wilson Fisk might be released from prison soon and Karen had work to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story assumes that Father Lantom doesn't know that Matt survived.


End file.
